In this Chemthink tutorial, you will explore molecular shapes and the VSEPR theory and take a short quiz. Topics include:

attraction and repulsion between charged particles

VSEPR (Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion) Theory

going from the 2-dimensional Lewis Dot representation to a 3-dimensional visualization of the molecule

This new HTML5 version was built from the ground up to run on iPads, mobile phones, Chromebooks, and real computers in any HTML5-capable browser. Please let us know if you have any issues. Thank you so much to Mr. Charles Sprandal for creating the original version of this wonderful tutorial!

The following fill-in-the-blank notes were provided by Rebecca Carlock at Centennial High School.

Thank you!! That was so speedy! I went to show the simbucket site, with this chemthink sim, at an AP chem training I am in. I told my classmates that the Lewis was going to be wrong, but you had already corrected it. Thanks, again!

As usual, the Molecular Shapes ChemThink was done masterfully. Thank you so much!

In tutorial frame 26 of Molecular Shapes, it might help students if the the term ‘molecular ion’ were used instead of the word ‘molecule’.

In the problem set of Molecular Shapes, the CO3 molecule is presented and not identified as the carbonate ion which is the subject of the following frame. [If what is presented represents the carbon trioxide molecule and not carbonate ion, so as not to mislead our best students, it might be helpful to identify it as a CO3 molecule in one of its excited states or to show the molecule in its C2v ground state. (Kowalczyk, 2007).]

In the Particulate Nature of Matter ChemThink, one slide disallows molecules from having only one atom. as being a correct answer. In chemistry there are two definitions of molecule and one of them is that a molecule is “the smallest particle of a gas”. Avogadro’s definition remains.